


to pull me from myself again

by limerental



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Bard Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, M/M, Role Reversal, Witcher Jaskier | Dandelion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:54:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26069788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limerental/pseuds/limerental
Summary: “You could be my barker!” the Witcher exclaimed in a fit of wide-armed inspiration on the brown road. “You sir, seem in want of a muse, and I am chock full of musings. Full to the brim.”“Full of something,” said Geralt, hands tight on the strap of his lute case, and Jaskier barked out a surprised laugh. Or at least, Geralt thought it was a laugh.It twisted gutturally in his throat.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 23
Kudos: 369





	to pull me from myself again

On the browned path on the outskirts of Upper Posada, the Witcher reined his horse to a sudden halt in a scuff of dirt.

No rain in months, the villagers said. The crops withering and now the grain stores ransacked by some Devil what come up out of the hills.

“Have you ever noticed how the quality of the light changes?” asked the Witcher, his voice a deep rasp. “After a long drought.”

“No,” said Geralt, who had been busy wondering once more why he had left the relative safety of the inn at the request of this stranger. He would see this one adventure through, he decided, but he would not linger.

“The stream of it across the hills. The haze of dust. The sepia tones of the barren earth,” said the Witcher, a hand raised as though to trace something that Geralt could not see with his simple human eyes. Slowly, like a painter visualizing the sweep of his brushstrokes across a canvas.

A wind rose through the burnt grass along the roadside and tousled the Witcher’s chestnut hair. His red mare took advantage of the stop to begin to tug dry tufts up by the roots.

The Witcher held still, far stiller than any ordinary man could manage, and the smile that touched his expression was eerie on his scarred face.

His teeth were too sharp.

His eyes slitted like a snake’s.

“Geralt, if only you could see what I see,” said the strange creature who had led him here.

“Don’t you have a Devil to hunt?” he asked. His heels felt raw in his boots and his lute case too heavy. He had a feeling he was going to regret what he had gotten himself into.

The Witcher only smiled.

* * *

This was not how Geralt thought a Witcher would be.

Born of noble birth and diversely educated, he did not have the same dark suspicion of their ilk as a low-born man would, but he had heard the ghost stories and tall tales often enough as a boy.

Witchers were twisted men as monstrous as the beasts they slayed.

A necessary evil but better to cross to the other side of the road if you saw one approachin’. Better yet, to head down a different path altogether.

Brutish and slovenly things who crept in the shadows and hung about unseemly establishments and preferred to dine on meat still warm from the kill.

Geralt, who had grown up acquainted with the wealthy knights who marched under their lords’ banners in gleaming armor that would never see the grime of battle, had always found something noble about the idea of the Witchers.

Protecting the common people, beating back the darkness. Not expecting or receiving a lick of thanks.

He had imagined a Witcher would be a solemn but steadfast figure. Haunted. Stoic. Gruff and single-minded.

Jaskier was nothing like that.

* * *

“Do you know,” said the man in the tavern, leaning across the table toward Geralt, “how many stories a Witcher has to tell? And how few people want to hear them?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” said Geralt, gripping the strap of the lute slung about his back.

He had hoped to finish his set and retreat to sit along the wall with the spoils of his performance, picking off the bits of mold from the stale loaves the villagers had tossed at his feet.

Instead, someone in the corner had beckoned to him. A broad man with chestnut hair, a scar sliced across the hollow of his cheek, his leather armor scuffed and cracking in places.

Geralt had approached with trepidation and settled across from him.

“I’ll give you a review. Three words, maybe less,” said the man. His voice scratched as though he had recently been struck by illness. It otherwise sounded chipper. Wistful. “They don’t exist.”

“What don’t exist?”

“The creatures in your song.” The man’s eyes gleamed. “Really, boy, it takes a true talent to invent monsters so bland and uninteresting. No wonder you’ve taken a pelting. And besides that, your cadence is all wrong. You sing about a mythical creature with the same droning on as an old man about the weather.”

“Tell me how you really feel,” said Geralt blandly as he rose to his feet. “I don’t know that I asked for your opinion. So why don’t you--” His eyes caught on the medallion that hung about the man’s neck, a silver wolf with a snarling mouth. “You’re a Witcher.”

“Call me Jaskier,” said the Witcher and held out a gloved hand across the table. Geralt stared at it. “I did not mean to offend. You have talent, bard. A voice like a songbird. Appalling stage presence and abysmal lyricism, but that can be forgiven. A wonderful sound. Like a mountain stream babbling into a valley. Clean and pleasing to the ear.”

Geralt felt his face heat. What a strange thing to say and a stranger way to phrase it.

He knew that he had vocal talent. He should hope so, given how many lessons he had endured throughout his childhood, mentors brought from all across the Continent to foster his innate talent and prime him for the bardic profession. It was an honor to have one so gifted in the family. It was not as if much else could be done with their small-statured fifth son.

“I’m Geralt,” he said. “Geralt of Rivia.”

“Oh, Rivia? A lovely area. Quite a dream to visit in the fall. The colors that touch the leaves there are so crisp and vibrant. Have you been to the harvest festival? I hear they release lanterns at dusk to guide the draw the evil spirits away.”

“I don’t-- it’s a stage name.”

“Oh,” said the Witcher. “All the more fitting, then. A beautiful piece of country that suits a beautiful man.”

He smiled with glinting canines.

His eyes glowed.

* * *

A weaselly farmer approached with a contract, desperate, knees knocking.

The Witcher smiled and said yes, yes, I’ll root out your Devil post-haste. Just give me enough in advance for a room at this fine establishment. The farmer pressed a coin purse into his hands, and he promptly reeled on Geralt, who had not moved from the table.

“If you would like, I would share my room with you,” said Jaskier and lifted a hand to brush along Geralt’s cheekbone. The touch startled a shiver down his spine.

He had never been with a man. Had never been with anyone.

“Now?” asked Geralt, swallowing past his nervousness, and the Witcher laughed.

“Yes,” he said. “But first I would ask you this, Geralt of Rivia. Will you follow me to the very edge of the known world?”

And he did.

* * *

Geralt had always been smaller than his brothers, twiggy and narrow through the waist, barely a muscle to speak of.

He did not think himself overly handsome, a rough jaw and a bulbous nose typical of his family line and a mouth too full, like a girl’s. His hair, the same as his mother’s, was an auburn shade of red, and he wore it at the same length that she did, brushing between his shoulderblades.

He was not a large man but had never felt so small as he did with the Witcher’s hands on his waist.

Jaskier’s fingers caught in the leather tie that held his hair out of his face and loosened it.

“Has anyone ever made love to you, Geralt?” the Witcher asked, and it was a foolish question, a trite flirtation. It inspired a burning across his cheeks all the same, the blush seeping down his neck and to the tips of his ears.

When Jaskier kissed him, the heat bloomed deeper, all-consuming.

The Witcher kneeled at his feet, chestnut hair and yellow eyes, quick jut of fangs in the crook of his sultry grin.

It was not love, the hollow of his mouth and the wet glow of his eyes.

Not yet, at least, but the potential of it hovered like a prologue to something greater in the musty air of the little room above the tavern in Upper Posada. It faltered and began to condense into a story.

The weight of it stole Geralt's breath.

* * *

“You could be my barker!” the Witcher exclaimed in a fit of wide-armed inspiration on the brown road. “You sir, seem in want of a muse, and I am chock full of musings. Full to the brim.”

“Full of something,” said Geralt, hands tight on the strap of his lute case, and Jaskier barked out a surprised laugh. Or at least, Geralt thought it was a laugh.

It twisted gutturally in his throat.

* * *

On any other evening, he would be settling in to tune his instrument and beg for scraps, praying that the innkeeper would find his work pleasing enough to allow him to sleep another night by the fire in the hall.

He told Jaskier this, walking beside the horse on the road.

“If your writing had some life to it,” said Jaskier, “you would not have that problem. You would sing in banquet halls the Continent over. Kings and queens would clamor over one another to invite you to their coronations and ceremonies and weddings.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“Nonsense,” said the Witcher. “It sounds exhilarating.”

“You be your own barker, then,” said Geralt.

“But you’ll agree to do it? Travel with me? Sing about the things I’ve seen?”

Geralt didn’t understand.

“Why?”

“Because,” said the Witcher, and he smiled. The smile held an edge of sadness. “I am very old, Geralt. I am old and tired and all I have left are stories. I cannot tell them myself. Can’t sing a lick unfortunately.” He cleared his throat. “And even if I were able, who would listen?”

“Why’s it so important?” What stories did this strange man have to tell?

The Witcher shook his head.

“It isn’t,” he said, “and it is.”

* * *

The Devil proved a more complex villain than the villagers believed.

Geralt, arms bound behind him, looked at the emaciated elves in their ratty clothes and listened to the Witcher who spoke to them kindly, fairly, and knew immediately this would not be their last adventure.

He would follow this man to the edge of the world and beyond.

He would follow him to his very last breath.

* * *

“I never wanted to be a bard,” said Geralt, lying beside the Witcher under the stars, the fire flickering out beside them. “There wasn’t much else I could be.”

“What would you choose instead?” asked the Witcher.

 _I want to help people_ , he thought. _I want to be as strong as you or stronger and do something useful with my life._

Instead, he would write a song for the Witcher, the story twisted just so in the ways that the other had suggested. Respect didn’t make history, and a carefully spun falsehood could build respect anew. Geralt would rewrite Jaskier’s story if he could. He would be his voice. He would sing the songs that he may have crooned himself if Fate had not been so cruel.

“Maybe a stableman,” he said finally.

He felt the peculiar burn of Jaskier’s strange gaze on him but did not turn to look.


End file.
